Titanfall: Chrysalis
by erlkid
Summary: People used to ask: Why build a giant robot? These days they ask: Why build a tiny human?


_'There's this creature they call the Ojuran Caterpillar.'_

_'Uh-huh.'_

_'You know why they call it that?'_

_'Nuh-uh.'_

_'They call it that 'cause it starts out life a deadly killing machine, then it spins a chrysalis, and when it comes out, it's a bigger, deadlier killing machine. Like a caterpillar. Except it's a killing machine. One of them taxonomical jokes.'_

_'Uh-huh?'_

_'Yup. Kinda reminds of you pilots and titans, right?'_

**Titanfall: Chrysalis**

There's four of us. There's me, Wilks, and then there's Tang, Locke, and Wiggin. We've seen a lot together. Fought a lot of battles. Killed a lot of people.

Well, probably not Locke. Dude can't hit the broadside of a barn, but we look out for him, and he's another set of eyes.

See, when this whole thing started we all signed on together. With the IMC, because we ain't stupid. We've been running with them ever since, and so far so good. Our little four-man squad, we call ourselves the Angel City Elite, 'cause that's what we called ourselves when we were all at school together, and no one ever accused us of growing up.

That's how we find ourselves coming home after a three year tour. We ain't coming to rest up, though. We're dropping on Angel City, ready for war. From somewhere way up the chain, orders have come through that there's been a milita resurgence at the harbor, and a space fleet is on the way with full titan support. A bloodbath is promised.

The Angel City Elite is ready. Not elite, exactly, but ready. Our drop pod slams into the ground, and out we hatch, newborn into the combat zone. Angel City is an architectural maze, a warren of low-rises punctuated by the teeth of modernity stretching into the sky, and cut through haphazardly by the walls thrown up when martial law was declared. Since then it's been a political powder keg, and one of the more iconic battle-lines in the Frontier.

For the ACE, it's another day, another dollar.

'Hey, Locke!' I call, as the four of us hit the ground and instinctively shuffle for the nearest cover. 'Gonna hit anyone today?'

'Me? Hell yeah, I'm precise, like a laserknife. One shot, one kill.'

'You only take one shot?' Tang chimes in. 'That explains a lot.'

With that, we set off. You don't drop a titan in a hotspot. A titan's deployment shield is near-unbreakable, but the cell burns out fast, and after that it becomes a colossal target, not much more than a giant coffin for any pilot stupid enough to mount up. Nope. First, you clear the area, and soak up the enemy's hottest, most ambitious bullets. That's where we come in. The quicker we kill the enemy, the quicker we get titan support. That's the deal.

What follows is the same battle you'll find across history. I wish I could say it's different, these days, but some things never change. It's the death of the plan, followed by the death of the men. There's the screams for home, for mothers, and the limbless men wandering around in shock, looking for their missing arms and legs. It's just another day for the Angel City Elite. Just another day us grunts, the boots on the ground. The cannon fodder.

Our route takes us into the heart of the district, and we make for a building with good lookout on the plaza below. We encounter a specter or two, former IMC, hacked by an enemy pilot. That's why we don't trust specters. Their jackal's heads round on us with machine precision, but there's four of us to two of them. We take them down, but an enemy pilot can't be far off.

We reach a room with a view, and Tang heads in first.

'Next man in!' he yells, from somewhere to the right of us.

'Coming in left!' Wiggin shoots back, entering the room and tracking left.

'Clear!' Tang waves us into the room, and we sidle in, taking cover in the windows with a view onto the street. Down there the grunts like us are locked in mortal combat, and the bullets fly. We take potshots. We don't have any idea how the battle's going, which is business as usual.

'Today's my lucky day, I haven't missed one shot!' Locke proudly announces, after maybe thirty minutes in our vantage.

'That's because you haven't even pulled the trigger,' Tang replies wearily.

It's been maybe ten minutes since last action, and I can feel our attention beginning to slip. My eyes are still wide open, scanning the plaza, and that's how I see it first: a figure, a shape moving in the alleyway opposite. The figure leaps up, boosts from wall to wall headed for the rooftop, and I know what it is.

'Enemy pilot!' I yell, and any sense of complacency vanishes from the rest of the Elite like they just mainlined amphetamines. In that time, the enemy pilot has leapt down from the roof and killed three of our guys in the street. The first he boosts toward, his leg outstretched. That leg punches straight through a visor, pulverizing the face behind it. As the victim goes over, his body shields the pilot from deadguy's two squad-mates, so that when the body hits the ground, the pilot has had all the time in the worlds to steady his shotgun. One bark from it and the other two squaddies are obliterated as well. Just like that.

That's a pilot. A jigsaw of skill and tech, representing the grade above people like us.

And that's us down there. Me, Tang, Wiggin, Locke. That might as well have been us. All our skill, all our hopes, all our dreams. Our names, our camaraderie. Our bungholes clench simultaneously, 'cause next time, we know we could be wrong place, wrong time.

That's when the ground vibrates beneath our feet with a power you feel rumbling through your sternum, and round the corner a three-story Ogre-class titan stomps, its 40MM already spitting fire toward the pilot. The pilot vanishes in a burst of jetfire, leaping for the rooftops, and our blood freezes as he grabs the ledge of a window off to our side.

He's here. He's in the building with us.

'DOWN!' Tang yells, as he sees the Ogre bring its weapon to bear on the building. The Titan sprays carelessly, tearing the room around us to shreds, but miraculously we're left in one piece at the end of it.

Somewhere in the chaos, I remember a time when people used to ask: 'Why build a giant robot?'

These days they ask: 'Why build a tiny human?'

If titans are the answer to question 1, then pilots are the answer to question 2. As the Ogre re-targets, chewing through enemy specters below, we peek over the window ledge in time to see a flicker, a mirage, crossing the road.

'There he is!' Locke yells, as if the Titan can hear us. We unload in the ghost's direction, but it moves erratically, jetpack firing to arc it up, kicking off walls, anything it can do to stop us drawing a bead.

We're only human. The pilot is a step above.

Still cloaked, the pilot approaches the Ogre from behind and boosts high, latching onto its chassis, climbing hand over hand to its summit. He ejects the emergency pop-catch over the shield generator, aiming right into its vulnerable internals, into a spot an enemy titan couldn't hope to hit. The titan begins to burn up, detonating from the inside as its shield misfires in random directions, shearing the structure, and the enemy pilot jumps clear as the ejector seat engages, sending the titan's pilot up and away.

As the enemy pilot hits the ground, triumphant, he's shot through the head by an assailant we can't even see. One of ours, but so far above us that it might as well be something else altogether.

The plaza goes quiet. The titan's wreck pops and cools. The rattle of gunfire is reassuringly distant.

We congratulate ourselves, pat ourselves on the back, because we just survived a clash between an enemy pilot and an enemy titan, and for people like us, any one you walk away from is a win.

The truth is, we just survived a single engagement in a much larger battle. A much larger war. We might have bought ourselves all of five minutes. We know exactly how fast a pilot can dismantle a unit like ours. Maybe that's why we're still together. Each other might be all we've got in that few seconds between coming face to face with a pilot, and everything that follows.

There's a burst of distant thunder, and we all look to the sky because we know the sound. Sure enough, there's a vapor trail, and a plunging fireball. The earth trembles as the fireball slams into the ground a block away, and it's the sound we dread most of all. It's the sound of a deadly killing machine becoming a bigger, deadlier killing machine.

It's the sound of Titanfall.

_'Not really. With the pilots and titans thing.'_

_'Huh?'_

_'You ever see an Ojuran Caterpillar get into a fight with an Ojuran Butterfly?'_

_'...No, not now you mention it.'_

_'Well, let's just say I wouldn't bet on either and hope to come out right. All that matters in that fight is not being an Ojuran Aphid caught between.'_


End file.
